The nation he made.

• Author: Normey, Robert
• Position: Law and Literature - Earl Warren; 'Justice for All: Earl Warren and the Nation He Made' - Book review

Earl Warren was a gifted politician and a remarkable Chief Justice of the United States. His life is narrated in a crisp, fascinating biography, Justice for All: Earl Warren and the Nation He Made (2006) by Jim Newton. The heart of the book is the recounting of Warren's tenure as Chief Justice during a tumultuous time in American history.

Warren began his career in California as a prosecutor. He rose to the position of District Attorney and then entered politics as a candidate for the Republican Party. He soon became Attorney General. In 1938, he issued a statement outlining his position on civil liberties at the request of an influential potential supporter, Robert Kenny. He received Kenny's support when he said, "I believe the preservation of our civil liberties to be the most fundamental and important of all our governmental problems because ... if we ever permit these liberties to be destroyed, there will be nothing left in our system worthy of preservation. They constitute the soul of democracy ... I believe that if majorities are entitled to have their civil rights protected they should be willing to fight for the same rights to minorities no matter how violently they disagree with their views." These were significantly liberal views for a California Republican in the 1930s. However, as Newton describes at some length, there was a considerable lapse of these views a short time later.

After the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, Californians reacted viscerally to the Japanese and Japanese-Americans in their midst. There were 93,000 Japanese and Japanese-Americans in California. Panic developed as the state readied itself for what many believed was an imminent strike or even an invasion of the West Coast. The FBI rounded up suspicious aliens--German, Italian, and Japanese. More than a thousand were arrested on December 7 and 8.

On January 24, 1942, United States Supreme Court Justice Owen Roberts issued a much anticipated analysis of the causes of the catastrophe at Pearl Harbor. This report, in a short passage, noted that spies had helped the Japanese military prepare for the attack. This brief reference stoked the anxieties of well-meaning leaders and opened a line of attack for those long interested in pursuing a campaign against Japanese-Americans.

Warren's actions in the weeks after the Roberts Report was released were contradictory. He objected to an initiative by California's State Personnel Board to prevent Japanese-Americans from...